Egan: NCC had a choice on Communist memorial. It just made the wrong one.

“There was really no choice,” Russell Mills declared of the disastrous siting of the Victims of Communism memorial.

Well, this being Ottawa, let us lean only gently on the famous John Turner vs. Brian Mulroney exchange — career-altering as it was. You had a choice, Mr. Mills: You could have said no, this is bad idea.

Maybe the minister would have scolded Mills, or howled at him, or replaced the entire board of the National Capital Commission. But one has to ask: When does the NCC draw a line in the sand? And is that line not the messing up of Canada’s most prominent street?

The emails released to the Citizen that formed the basis of Don Butler’s insightful reporting this week make for intriguing reading about the limited scope the Crown corporation actually has in shaping the look of the capital.

However, did no one else find it — “ironic” is close, but not quite the right word — that the NCC is capable of relocating a chunk of Ottawa’s $1 billion LRT extension by just saying NO and flinging the first route back at the City of Ottawa, yet cannot even push a national memorial across the street? One day, the NCC moves mountains. The next, they can’t move a pile of concrete.

It has been said the NCC is head waiter to the cabinet. True. And thus is the head waiter lord of the busboy, but not much else.

The board is loaded with individuals with murderous credentials. The chief executive has a PhD, for Pete’s sake. And there are honoured architects, leaders in business and technology and banking, a former MPP and judge, a former cop and mayor, MBAs. On and on it goes.

Are we to believe that this group, with more collective wisdom than a Solomon family reunion, actually supports putting that monument in that location?

It makes no sense. And isn’t it wonderful to know we fly in these esteemed thinkers from across Canada so they can rubber-stamp stupid ideas, cooked up in a partisan kitchen? Seriously. What a way to build a city.

Even Mills himself, in fact, has left a fairly clear impression that he doesn’t support the location. He’s been NCC chair for eight years. A former publisher of the Citizen, he knows the town inside out. Was there no way, in a place that breathes politics, to finesse a better deal than this?

So, to the back-door approach it goes. One gets the distinct impression that, with a little delay here and there — this is Ottawa, after all, where there’s no time like later — the NCC is hoping Oct. 19 will resolve everything.

With a change in government, the best guess is the memorial to Victims of Communism will end up as a plaque in Major’s Hill Park, not a monstrous, hilly thing in the shadow of Parliament Hill.

The shortfall in private fundraising only adds to the intrigue. According to just-accessed documents, the taxpayer share has jumped 41 per cent, to more than $4.2 million, whereas the charitable contributions are expected to be about half the original estimate of $2.5 million. Does it not say something that — behold the eight million Canadians supposedly linked to Communist countries — the donated money appears to have dried up?

And the monument itself is shrinking.

At the June board meeting, it was striking how many changes the federal players have managed to wrangle from the original design, which had looked as though it would dwarf even the Supreme Court of Canada.

The design once took up about 60 per cent of the 5,000-square-meter site. The latest version had this down to 37 per cent and possibly shrinking yet again. Its highest point went from 14.35 metres to eight. The number of memory folds, the distinctive triangular shapes, went from seven to five.

The lighting? Changed. Landscape materials? Working on it. The body of the unknown victim, lying face-down in the plaza and representing the 100 million who lost their lives? Gone. Images of massacre? Replaced by visions of hope-filled refugees. You know, if we keep this up, the monument will be a paper weight, with smiley faces on all sides.

Interesting, too, that Mills and others described these changes as “progress.” So much for the integrity of an artistic vision, whatever one thinks of it.

In 2013, and many times since, the NCC certainly did have a choice. It just made the wrong one.

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